


Destiny and Duty

by SirenAlpha



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, The Gaang Learns How Zuko Got The Scar (Avatar)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 12:20:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28706556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SirenAlpha/pseuds/SirenAlpha
Summary: Aang is trying to back away and bow out of his destiny, but Zuko's already lived through one succession crisis. He's not going to let another happen.Set during the finale.
Comments: 17
Kudos: 307





	Destiny and Duty

**Author's Note:**

> Please, won't anyone think of the politics?  
> The fix it is just for the one conversation in the finale, not the whole thing.

Zuko can tell they’re losing the thread of this conversation.

“I can't just go around wiping out people I don't like,” Aang argues.

“Sure you can. You're the Avatar. If it's in the name of keeping balance, I'm pretty sure the universe will forgive you,” Sokka says.

Aang snaps, “This isn't a joke, Sokka! None of you understand the position I'm in.”

Katara speaks sympathetically, “Aang, we do understand. It's just...”

“Just what, Katara? What?” he snaps at her.

Zuko frowns.

“We're trying to help!” she says, matching his tone now that he’s been snappy with her.

“Then, when you figure out a way for me to beat the Fire Lord without taking his life, I'd love to hear it!” Aang shouts and starts to walk away.

“Aang, don't walk away from this,” she says, moving to follow.

Zuko quickly gets up and puts a hand on her shoulder to calm her. He makes sure to keep his voice gentle when he calls out, “Aang.”

“What?” Aang snaps, turning back around towards him.

“This isn’t a choice you get to make. You’re the Avatar.”

“I just told Sokka-,”

“No,” Zuko says, cutting him off. He moves out from behind Katara to face him directly. “This isn’t about the universe forgiving you. It is unfair that we’re asking this of you, but this is your destiny.”

“How can it be my destiny to kill someone? It’s wrong to take someone’s life! Don’t you care about your father’s life?” he asks.

Zuko frowns and realizes that he has maybe underestimated how much Aang understood all of this. “There is no option but to kill the Fire Lord, and no one to kill the Fire Lord but the Avatar.”

“I won’t do it!” Aang insists loudly.

“Do you know what you’re actually saying when you say that?”

“Of course! I’m saying everyone’s life matters, even someone like the Fire Lord.”

“No, you’re saying your feelings matter more than the lives of every single person the Fire Lord puts at risk,” he says then points out towards the Earth Kingdom, “You’re saying everyone in the Earth Kingdom that could be killed by the razing matters less to you than keeping your hands clean. That’s unacceptable for someone in your position.”

“That’s not true-,”

“And you’re insulting me as your teacher. I taught you firebending so you could fulfill your destiny as the Avatar, not for you to take everything I’ve taught you and throw it away.”

“I’m not throwing it away. There has to be a better way than killing him. I can use what you taught me for that.”

“If you want to live, if you want to protect the Earth Kingdom, you have to strike him down without hesitation or he will win.”

Aang’s eyes dart back and forth, looking for some kind of argument. “You were in the palace. Why didn’t you do it then if you think it’s the right thing to do? Doesn’t that show that you want him to live?”

“No, it doesn’t. If I did it then that’d just make everything worse.”

“Then why are you asking me to do it?”

“Because the Avatar is the only person who can remove heads of state.”

Aang blinks at him, some of his anger fading in surprise. “Remove heads of states? I can do that as the Avatar?”

Zuko stares at him, trying to see if he’s kidding or not, and he really isn’t. “I cannot believe how badly you were failed by your guardians.”

“They didn’t fail me,” Aang insists, getting prickly. “I was treated and raised well by the Monks. They taught me so much and helped me to become the youngest airbending master we had on record.”

“No, he’s right,” Toph adds. “You remember what I told you in Ba Sing Se about proper manners, that you’d never learned any and it was a little too late? You aren’t just taught manners when you’re born into royalty like Zuko or nobility like me. If you weren’t raised like that, that actually makes a lot of things about you make sense.”

“What do you mean? What things?” Aang asks. 

“Like that you don’t know what removing heads of states means,” Toph says dryly.

Zuko crosses his arms. “I always thought the Avatar was coddled for being told about their position at sixteen, but now I see how it’s cruel. You’ve been asked to complete this task without being prepared for it at all.”

“The only reason I wasn’t prepared was because I left the temple before I started training to be the Avatar,” Aang says.

Zuko turns to Toph to check if he’s the only one that thinks that’s entirely missing the point. She’s not looking back at him, of course, but she is wearing a dubious expression. He turns back and says, “You should have been preparing for your position from the moment you were born, but since that’s not possible with the Avatar, it should have started once they discovered you were the Avatar.”

“No way,” Aang says, waving that off. “That’s too young to take on the role. That’s the whole problem. They told me too soon.”

“This all only happened because of the war,” Sokka says, like he’s trying to keep things calm. “Would you really be saying any of this if there weren’t a war going on?”

“Aang was only told by the Monks so young because they were getting afraid of Sozin,” Katara adds.

“You think that no Avatar has ever been born in the midst of war before? I was born during the war,” Zuko asks then gestures to Toph, “Toph was born during the war. Why should the Avatar be treated differently from royalty or nobility when he has even more responsibility?”

“Yeah, but you didn’t have your whole life changed by becoming the crown prince and have everyone treat you differently,” Aang says petulantly.

Zuko has to bite his tongue from saying the first thought that comes to mind with how extremely ungracious it is. Instead he asks, “Do you know anything about how I became crown prince?”

“You were born Crown Prince,” he answers with an air of confusion.

Zuko looks around to the rest of the group. “Do any of you know?”

Sokka and Katara share a look showing they clearly don’t know. Suki shrugs. Toph answers, “Fire Lord Azulon died and named Ozai his heir instead of his eldest Iroh and as his first born you became the crown prince.”

“Close enough,” Zuko says. “Half my family died or disappeared within a week when I was named Crown Prince at eleven. Only one of them ever came back.”

Aang hangs his head, shifting guiltily on his feet. “Sorry.”

Zuko tells him, “The reason you needed to be told when you were young is so you understand what’s being asked of you if you have to take on responsibility younger than you deserve to. If you’d been trained properly, you’d know that you could not abandon your duties under any circumstances.”

“But didn’t you and Toph abandon your duties? You say you were raised that way, but you’ve both left home and what you’re supposed to be doing,” Aang points out. “Why can’t I find a way to spare the Fire Lord’s life?”

Zuko actually bites his tongue at how unintentionally insulting that question is.

“Twinkle Toes, the only duty I have back home waiting for me is to be betrothed, marry, and bear an heir,” Toph says when Zuko doesn’t speak. “Some noblewomen are able to carry on their Houses themselves, but I can’t read. I’d be able to rely on someone else to read for me as I can tell when people are lying, but I can’t even tell my parents that because they don’t believe in me or my bending. I’m not being trained to carry on my House. It’s not exactly a higher calling than training the Avatar. I can also work that out later if this all goes right so it’s not really abandoned.”

Aang then turns to Zuko.

“Training you is not abandoning my duties,” Zuko says, deadly serious. “It is my duty to see to my people’s and my nation’s needs. What they need is a new Fire Lord, one that is competent and compassionate and can change the course of our history. I am here training you to accomplish that task.”

Zuko pauses for a moment then decides that he must say it so Aang understands. “My uncle abandoned his duties after he lost his son. I can understand his grief, but if he had returned home, it’s very likely he would have been crowned Fire Lord instead.”

He had not listened to his uncle for that reason for a very long time.

Aang scrunches up his face, still looking for a way around this. “Okay, duty is very important, and maybe I should have been told about it earlier, but what about what I actually asked about? What about removing heads of states?”

“It’s literally that,” Toph says. “You remove the people in charge of the country.”

“The Avatar is the only one who can do it without making things worse,” Zuko says. “It will be seen as justified, and Uncle will be able to rightfully take the throne after. If anyone else does it, it’d cause a succession crisis or civil war. It would be better for the world if the Avatar were to kill the Fire Lord.”

“Why does it have to be killing him if it’s just removal?” Aang asks. “Didn’t we do that with Long Feng? We removed him from power.”

Zuko rolls his eyes because he heard that story from Azula plenty of times.

“What?” Aang asks. “We did do it.”

“You didn’t do anything. Azula did it. Whoever controls the Dai Li controls Ba Sing Se. They continued to follow Long Feng’s order after he was imprisoned. Then Azula played Long Feng for a fool and took control of the Dai Li. King Kuei never had any power.”

“That just proves why killing the Fire Lord matters,” Sokka declares. “We did the wrong thing in Ba Sing Se. We couldn’t keep Azula from taking the city. We have to do it differently this time.”

“What do you think happens after if you don’t kill him in this battle?” Zuko asks, changing tack. “What do you do with him? You can’t make him good. If you bring him back to the Fire Nation, you’ll start a civil war. If you bring him anywhere else, he’ll be killed for what he’s done to them. All you’d do is succeed in keeping your hands clean as others suffer for your choices.”

“We can put him in one of the Air Temples, I don’t know,” Aang tosses out like that wouldn’t result in upsetting more than a few spirits, “Katara, come on, surely you can see my point. Even you didn’t kill when you had the chance.”

Katara’s face hardens. “This is not the same at all. The man I found was weak and pathetic. He couldn’t hurt anyone else. Ozai is the most powerful person in the world. He needs to be stopped and punished for all that he’s done.”

Aang looks disheartened. “Come on, guys. We’re supposed to be good. We should care about every life. Everyone should get a chance, even Fire Lord Ozai.”

Zuko says. “I swear to you, he does not care about life. He does not care about mercy. He will not change. You cannot sacrifice yourself or the entire world to make him see good.”

“How do you know?” Aang asks.

“What he’s done to the world isn’t enough for you?” Toph asks. “Not even what he’s done to Zuko?”

“I get he’s not a great father, but he’s still a human being,” he argues.

Zuko feels the ground shift under one of his feet, a nudge from Toph.

“If you don’t know about how I became Crown Prince, do you know anything about how I was banished?” Zuko asks.

Aang says, “No.”

Everyone shakes their head except for Toph who nods only once.

Zuko has to take a steadying breath before he can get it out, keeping his eyes well away from anyone’s face. “I spoke out against a general in the Fire Lord’s throne room because he wanted to use new recruits as bait. It was grounds for an Agni Kai. I thought I’d face the general, but instead faced the Fire Lord. I conceded. I knelt down and begged for mercy because he was my father and my Lord. He burned my face in front of the whole court and banished me for not fighting. The only way I could get back home and have even a chance of keeping my sister from the throne was if I captured the Avatar whom no one had seen in almost a hundred years. I was thirteen. The Fire Lord knows no mercy.”

Zuko looks up and looks Aang in the face, “If you value his life over the safety of the Earth Kingdom, my uncle, and myself, you are not my friend and you are no longer my student.”

Aang looks so pale Zuko wonders if he was going to throw up, but he doesn’t.

“Do you understand your destiny now?” Zuko asks.

Aang says nothing for a moment then drops his head and admits, “Yes.”

“Good,” he says, storming off before he loses his grip on his temper. He spares a moment as he gets some distance to hate the Air Nomad Monks for a moment. He didn’t enjoy browbeating a child into understanding and accepting such a terrible destiny. At thirteen, Zuko also would have been uncomfortable killing anyone and couldn’t see what his father had done wrong. But he had still had his face burned for defending young soldiers, his people. He had still embarked on a fool’s errand with no possible chance of success in all seriousness to have any chance at even the slightest of long shots to inherit the throne over Azula to spare his people.

Now, he would not abandon even the Earth Kingdom, whom he had always been told were their fiercest enemies as a child, to spare his father. Regardless of what small and twisted feelings of familial duty and love he held towards his father, he knows he spared him for his uncle’s sake. His uncle could only be safely put on the throne if the Avatar removed the Fire Lord, not Zuko.

Aang _needs_ that commitment, that understanding if he wants to be a good Avatar. The rest of the world _needs_ him to have it. The Monks didn’t give it to him. It was hard not to be furious with them for hampering their efforts like this even if it had happened a hundred years ago, and they had only done as tradition dictated.

Zuko roars his fury to the heavens, careful to keep his flames only to his mouth and only directed upwards so nothing would catch. It gets the worst of his thick and sticky anger out of his chest, but he still pants smoke for a few more breaths. He’s not cut out for these kinds of conversation. Times where he doesn’t have something he can do next. There is no next task or duty to complete right now. All that’s left is to get Aang to the battlefield, and that can’t be done yet.

“I didn’t realize it was that bad,” Toph says.

Zuko startles to find her standing out of the range of his firebending. “What’s that bad?”

“Your banishment,” she says. “I only heard you were burned and banished, not anything else.”

“I’ve healed,” he tells her, carefully moving towards her position so she knows he won’t be bending.

“You still have a scar,” she says.

“Yeah.”

They start walking back to the house side by side.

“By the way, you might want to talk to Sugar Queen. Last I heard, she wanted to take Appa to go and kill your father herself and Sokka and Aang were trying to stop her.”

“Toph!” he scolds before starting to run back towards the house. Didn’t she hear him about how the Avatar had to be the one to kill him?

**Author's Note:**

> This was a lot harder than I thought it would be to write. It was supposed to be about under what circumstances would Zuko tell the gaang himself and I'm like obviously he would do it to show Aang how terrible Ozai is and that he's not worth saving. Then there was just a whole lot of other things appeared on the way there, and then I had to go back and make it actually sound like Zuko. 
> 
> All I want is for the show to remember that Zuko is royalty and Toph is a noble and you can't really just let a deposed king live without any problems, especially not in the country they were deposed from. It's like the show went out of it's way to make sure Zuko had a terrible ever after. I just wanted to do something on Actual Prince Zuko's thoughts because the show does make a compelling argument that Zuko cares a lot about his royal duties even from a young age, but there's no follow through where it matters like whether he and Iroh get to live after Ozai gets deposed by Aang. I can't imagine it not being a big problem for him. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
